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Mnemosyne Doe
= Personality = Convinced that humanity has a greater story to tell, Mnemosyne is driven to understand and catalog that story. Somewhere in that process, however, her own story was buried and forgotten, though not lost. She can thus seems emotionless and stoic on the surface, but it is empathy and understanding that ultimately motivates her, and these things color her morality as well. = Sheet = Attributes: : Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2 : Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2 : Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3 Abilities: : Talents: Alertness 2, Empathy 3, Expression 3, Malkavian Time 4, Subterfuge 2 : Skills: Performance 4, Stealth 3 : Knowledges: Culture 3, Linguistics 4, Occult 2 Advantages: : Disciplines: Auspex 4, Obfuscate 3 : Backgrounds: Age 1, Generation 5, Status 1, Herd 3, Retainers 1 : Virtues: Conscience 4, Self Control 4, Courage 2 : Humanity: 7 : Willpower: 8 : Blood Pool: 15 (3 per turn) : Merits: Medium (2), Oracular Ability (3), Eidetic Memory (2) : Flaws: Intolerance (1), Severe Phobia (3), Driving Goal (3) Intolerance Imprisoning someone, or specifically imprisoning someone for selfish desire, raises Mnemosyne's hackles and is likely to rouse her displeasure. While she has swallowed this small sense of justice for certain Princes, she is unlikely to tolerate for long. Severe Phobia Anything that might remind Mnemosyne of her prior existence is terrifying to her. References to ballet make her uneasy to frightened, and the removal of her hood can cause her to be suddenly reduced into a gibbering heap. Even the threat of doing so can cause her extreme anxiety. This phobia is somewhat mitigated if Mnemosyne is impersonating someone (she obviously won't always have a hood in this case), but reminders of her past remain distinctly uncomfortable. Driving Goal To write the story of humanity. This means collecting memories and personalities by not only observing, but also partaking of human blood on occasion to experience the sensory experience of that person's "memories". While Mnemosyne is no fighter, any obstructions to this goal will either be circumvented or met with dangerous subtlety and guile. Specialties ; Manipulation : Despite her off putting stoicism and vaguely unreadable exterior, there's something about this woman that makes her easy to believe; perhaps its her enchanting voice, or perhaps its her understanding of people in general that makes this so. Regardless, she is very persuasive. ; Perception : Some people seem to have a certain connection to the undercurrent of the universe, and Mnemosyne is one of those people. Her intuition is powerful, and her insight genuine. ; Performance : Ever since childhood, Mnemosyne has been a genius of imitation and disguise. Offer her a part, and she will dance to the music without missing a beat. ; Linguistics : Mnemosyne has the ability to pick up languages at an alarming rate, but her true skills lie in picking up the subtleties of each language that allow her to blend in to her surrounding environs more easily. * Current Languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish. Herd Over the years, Mnemosyne has gathered unto her a small cult of "likeminded" individuals that she uses for not only feeding purposes, but as feelers for information. These people are usually transients like herself, and take odd jobs as they move around. Some are performers that she has picked up in the area since her arrival. Retainer The "high priest" of her cult, if he can be called as such, is an investigative reporter by the name of Kyle Burkin. This man mostly lives out of his van, and is always available to give Mnemosyne a place to stay, or a safe method of travel as she moves around. He's also usually more than happy to purchase anything she needs. Derangement This derangement is unique to the Kindred, and usually a response to vampires' deep-seated guilt regarding the act of feeding on the blood of mortals. While this is not necessarily the case for Mnemosyne, who believes she is performing a sacred duty, the effects remain the same. She believes that vampires do not merely consume a victims' blood, but their souls as well. In the hours after feeding, she hears the voice of her victim inside her head and feels a tirade of "memories" from the victim's mind - all created by her subconscious. In extreme cases, this sense of possession can drive her to carry out actions on behalf of her victims. = History = Even before she was Embraced, the woman now known as Mnemosyne Doe had always danced just two steps away from madness. Though obsessed with the performing arts and their gateway to fantasy, Mnemosyne was never really interested in aesthetic form and beauty. Her eye was always on the immaterial. How could she find and kindle that spark of human essence in her audience? How could she share with them her memories? Mnemosyne's mother was a poor Parisian ballerina financially beholden to a certain impresario during the declining years of ballet in the 1820s. The woman was leashed to the stage and never allowed to wander far. She was a star. It was her dream, and the impresario knew this well enough to manipulate her contract. However, despite his advances, the woman fell in love with her male counterpart. It was a terrible secret, as she had also succumbed to the impresario's whims in her desperate attempt to remain on the stage. After an inevitable pregnancy, the impresario assumed the child was his, and raised her in captivity in much the same way he had bound her mother. The woman's true lover, however, would often come to her at night and teach her the secrets of the dance. It didn't matter if this little girl wasn't really his daughter, but he treated her as such and introduced to her the world of fantasy that lived only on the stage. She reveled in the stories and committed every dance to memory, but not because she saw the movements as art, as he did. They were the words, the medium to escape, as she saw how they could affect an audience during each performance. She became entranced with the characters and spoke with them as if they were there while she danced. Of course she was aware they weren't really there; the point was to live the experience and expand the mind. Many of the other performers thus became uneasy around the child, as she developed an uncanny ability to empathize with and become any character handed to her, though this often included following and imitating people around the theater. Sometimes she even asked questions of a person's life and then plucked out a personality to imitate whenever that person was around. But this was merely play as practice for a larger goal. It began as only a small inkling, but she started creating her own dance and story in bits and pieces as she grew, modifying it a little as her life changed and her world shifted. But as the ballet industry continued to fail, tension in the theater leapt to new heights, and the impresario pushed Mnemosyne's mother to try harder, perform more, until finally she collapsed during a performance, exhausted. Her lover approached the impresario that evening and begged him to give the woman some rest, but the impresario refused. They argued. They fought. And in the darkness of that evening, Mnemosyne saw her mother's lover murdered at the hands of her father. Something beyond the brutality terrified her; the man that had always been her doorway into the dance was gone. That door, every bit of its uniqueness, was gone forever... Unless she made it immortal. Suddenly, the pace of her life changed. The impresario somehow managed to dispose of the body, but even so, he couldn't bully, convince, or intimidate Mnemosyne's ailing mother to take the stage any more. His gaze then shifted to his daughter, who had been well-groomed to take his mother's place. She was forced to practice and practice. Even as her mother died, she practiced. Everything she remembered of her mother became part of the dance. It would all be performed onstage, regardless of form and music. Everyone would see it and remember. Though her health dwindled, her obsession grew. Still, as the girl seemed a genius of performance and related philosophy, her eccentricities were vastly ignored. Her father certainly wasn't about to complain; the girl brought him money. But then Mnemosyne decided to act. It was a mostly solo performance, and her moves defied the choreography. She became her mother, and her lover-partner was nothing more than an imagined ghost that left the audience mostly confused and bewildered, save one. Furious, her father sought her out. Exhaustion and weariness finally ate through her obsession, and the girl fled into the streets from fear, though she had nowhere to go. It was a very strange man that eventually found and approached her, well-dressed like a young girl might dress a doll. That night, at the bright age of 20, she disappeared. Her father never found her. Unsurprisingly, being Embraced by a Malkavian utterly shattered the girl's mind. Her prior obsession with fantasy, imitation and story warped into an utter fixation on memory. The very taste of blood could send her into a sensory overload as she recalled (or believed she was recalling) the memories and personalities of her victims. In her mind, she had become an archive; she was a bastion of knowledge and human memory, and it was Important that she try to catalog as much of this as she could. Never mind that the memories faded after a few hours. As far as Mnemosyne was concerned, they were all still there, just buried beneath her own persona. This persona of hers was a problem, however, so she renamed herself and began a slow, but determined process of burying her old self. Thus, she slowly came into her own as an open-minded sage and seer, if one can consider madness "open". But at first, she remained broken and scrabbling for an understanding of Kindred life. Though her sire had the grace to offer her some proper introductions, his own obsessions eventually lead him away. Mnemosyne was forced to linger around what she knew best: the performing art scene. Though at first she absolutely loathed herself, the woman eventually compromised with her conscience enough to allow for feeding only if her prey gave permission. To this end, she promised certain performers essential immortality by convincing them of her ability to retain their memory. Very few were ever made aware of how she actually did this. The longer she "lived," the easier this became. Through various connections of those that began joining in a social circle around her, Mnemosyne found doors open into theaters all around Europe. Performers saw her as a muse - or the mother of inspiration, as her name implies - and would very often petition her to bless them (or partake of their memory, if in the know). As the years wore on, this cult grew in size. Thus, the first hundred years or so of Mnemosyne's unlife consisted of a long series of travels and the partaking of blood from academicians, performers, philosophers and other personalities worthy of being preserved. She eventually collided with some Toreador and Ventrue, some of which found her frightening and perhaps repulsive, others of which found her talents very useful, and supplied her with a steady stream of interesting individuals. For many years at a time she served under various Princes, acting as seer and often manipulator behind the scenes. But something unknown bid her forever westward. Her tastes eventually widened to the lay people, as even they deserved a word in the extraordinary tapestry of mankind. The woman moved all over Europe, collecting languages, esoteric knowledge... and followers. The sanity of those people who Mnemosyne deemed worthy to help her collect information became more and more questionable, but they remained always loyal to their saint, and acted as a delightful food source. At least this way they would be assured their personalities would live on forever. At some point in the Roaring Twenties, Mnemosyne finally made her way over to the Americas. Like a spirit, she danced and glided down the eastern seaboard, examining its people and integrating into their culture. The 30's depression found her in St. Louis, and it wasn't until the 40's when she made her way towards Denver and eventually Crystal Springs. She arrived when the War of the Hope Drinker was at its peak, but remained uninvolved, keeping her presence unknown. Her ability to imitate and integrate served her well in this regard. However, once the purging of Kindred began, the woman made her way further west, and explored the large cities on the western seaboard for quite some time. Something has been calling her recently, however. Something sleeping beneath Crystal Springs has inspired the people of that city, and their stories seemed full of destiny, even as early as the 1940s. The danger of the interim years prevented her further investigation into the city's people and the secrets buried in their memories. But now, something tells her that things are different. Some inextricable force draws her hence. Category:Character Archive